Piano Trios

Brahms Piano Trio No. 1 in B major, Op. 8  
Shostakovich Piano Trio No. 1 in C minor, Op. 8

Ruth Rogers violin
Peter Adams cello 
Russell Hirshfield piano

Many of Shostakovich’s chamber works are characterised by acerbic anger and biting satire. Not the composer’s Piano Trio No. 1, which is coloured instead by the love the composer felt for his fellow student Tatiana Glivenko. That love brought longing, yearning music from Shostakovich and a cello melody of radiant beauty. Brahms’s Piano Trio No. 1 is also flushed with the buoyance of youth – or was, at least. The composer revised this trio 35 years after he wrote it, tempering his adventurous self-confidence with the sense of Apollonian perfection with which he made his name. Musicians from the Oxford Philharmonic present these fresh-faced trios in the intimate surroundings of the Holywell Music Room.